I M M O B I L I S M | a labor of love lost and found (2010-2020)

I wrote these words a long time ago.

What the two areas do share, however, is a basic material relationship as informal marketplaces that grew on the periphery of infrastructure that was not planned to accommodate them, nor the livelihoods they sustain. As the title of Niasari’s documentary, ‘Under the Bridge,’ suggests, Cola and Dora are located in areas that can be easily bypassed or avoided by car. The two hubs lie on what civil engineers call ‘at-grade’ level, and the two bridges that span over them perform a ‘grade separation’ between two main vehicular flows: over the bridge, the faster moving, inter-city traffic destined for the heart of Beirut, and below, a knot of more-local traffic, where the activities that constitute Cola and Dora as transport hubs take place. ‘Grade separation,’ a mundane method of traffic management, is not without a social effect in this context: the bridges are intended to minimise interruptions to the flow of traffic into the center of Beirut, and hence can be seen as a means of ‘splintering’ two experiences of the city (see Hutchinson, 2000 for similar dynamics in Los Angeles). This is a major reason for my own complete ignorance of Cola before starting my research. For many years, I had driven to the airport and further south without ever realising that Cola was beneath Salim Salam bridge. For anyone who does not navigate the area ‘at-grade,’ this airport route effectively erases Cola from Beirut’s geography.

This overwhelming sensory environment points to the materiality of an informal ‘market’ that grew -- out of necessity -- on the periphery of infrastructure that was not planned to accommodate it. As placenames, “Cola” and “Dora” refer to “layered activity” (Niasari, 2011: np) that occurs at key roundabouts in Greater Beirut, with Dora lying just outside the administrative borders of municipal Beirut. Both hubs had been important nodes in Beirut’s public transport network since before the civil war, as Niasari (2011) explains:

Kassir (2010) writes: “Whereas before the Great War there had been only a half-dozen cars in Beirut, and the government itself owned only five cars in 1920, there were no fewer than 376 motor vehicles in the following year. The first drivers’ licenses were issued in 1921…In the space of two years, the number of cars registered in Lebanon tripled; in 1928 there were 5,291 and then almost 10,000 in 1932” (p. 303).

I wrote these words in secret, after dark, a long time ago. I hesitated when writing these words.